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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 




THE TERCENTENARY 

OF 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



A EULOG1UM 

PRONOUNCED IN 

ST. JAMES'S CHURCH, CHICAGO 
SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 1916 



BY THE 

REV. JAMES S. STONE, D.D. 
RECTOR 



PRINTED BY REQUEST 



A- 



Copyright, 1916, 
JAMES S. STONE 



©ill 
*t>thor 

12 AUG IT 



JUN -2 IS* 6 



This EULOGY ON WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE is 
distributed with the compliments of the Wardens, Vestry- 
men, and Treasurer of St. James's Church, Chicago. 

Charles A. Street 
Edwin J. Gardiner 

Wardens 

John S. Miller 
Henry E. Bullock 
Robert Foote Hall 
Robert Collyer Fergus 
W. Alford Green 
c. colton daughaday 
Thatcher Hoyt 
John W. Kendrick 
Vestrymen 

Archibald E. Freer 
Treasurer 



AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC 
POET W. SHAKESPEARE. 



1630. 



What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, 

The labour of an age in piled stones? 

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid 

Under a star-ypointing pyramid? 

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a live-long monument. 

For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art 

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, 

Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving, 

Doth make us marble with too much conceiving; 

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, 

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 

JOHN MILTON. 



You will agree with me, Good Friends, that this Church, 
the oldest Church in the City of Chicago in communion 
with the Church at Stratford-on-Avon, where lie interred 
the remains of William Shakespeare, should have its part 
in the tercentenary of the death of the immortal poet. I 
confess that had it been possible I should have invited to 
address you the most accomplished Shakespearian scholar 
I could have obtained in our University, or, failing such, 
some one of the many learned lovers of the Master who are 
to be found easily in this city. And yet, after all, it may be 
well that a priest of the Communion to which the poet un- 
doubtedly belonged should say what is to be said on this 
occasion. At the same time, it must be understood that I 
can tell you nothing new. As Mark Antony said of Julius 
Caesar, "I tell you that which you yourselves do know." 
I am myself only a disciple of those who have studied, and 
are the acknowledged exponents of, the Poet and of the 
vast literature which has grown up round him. There are 
many here who know more of him and of that literature 
than I do. I venture little more than to set myself in the 
multitude of those who admire and love the Man, who, 
beyond all other men, has enriched the world's literature, 
and given lasting and unsullied glory to the race which 
speaks his language. 

Much less will any one question that it is most fitting 
that the Church should acknowledge the debt due by all 
who are interested in the welfare of society to the art and 
the profession which have for their purpose the delineation 
of human nature in all its phases. True, 

"all the world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players;" 
but it is well ever and anon to have the stage reduced to 

7 



proportions more readily comprehended, and to see the 
passions and virtues, the characters and purposes, even the 
vices and weaknesses of humanity, displayed and unfolded 
in just interpretation. Such representations serve both to 
educate and to divert the mind; and while progress towards 
knowledge and truth must be maintained, that progress 
can be the better pursued when imagination and pleasure 
are allowed a commensurate indulgence. The Church has 
never lost sight of the fact that histrionic art may service- 
ably supplement and truly strengthen her more severe 
method of instruction. In the Middle Ages she brought in 
the Mystery Play, precursor of the modern drama. Indeed, 
is not the chief and central service of the Church itself a 
drama — sacred verily beyond all other events of history, 
but still a drama? Does she not seek to depict in that 
Sacrament of the Altar the story of the Cross — the Man of 
Sorrows, the treachery and cowardice of disciples, the 
bitterness of persecutors, the selfishness and weakness of 
rulers, and the awful catastrophe by which the world was 
robbed of a Reformer and won a Saviour? Read between 
the lines, and every Sunday morning you behold a drama 
more wonderful than any that even a Sophocles or a Shakes- 
peare conceived. It is not therefore unreasonable that the 
Church, whose Scriptures contain not only the story of this 
sublime tragedy, but also such dramatic poems as the Song 
of Songs and the Book of Job, should commemorate in one 
of her own sons a poet and dramatist such as William 
Shakespeare. 

Moreover this man had in his many-sided character a 
side that was profoundly religious. Or, to put that state- 
ment another way, in his creations he set forth and appreci- 
ated spiritual and virtuous qualities, and placed on the 
lips of his men and women words expressive of holiness and 
purity of life. On the other hand, he dealt as clearly with 



characters the opposite of these. That was an attribute of 
his genius. He could put aside his own tastes, feelings, con- 
ceptions, and habits, more entirely than any other writer 
has ever done, and read and display absolutely and uner- 
ringly the man or woman whom he would make known. It 
may be claimed, therefore, that in neither direction did he 
reveal his own soul. But he was as just as he was. exact. 
There is no instance in which he excuses wrong, or in which 
he holds an evil or despicable character to be an object of 
praise or imitation. He invariably brings or leaves them 
to the shame and punishment which a life ignoble and in- 
human properly deserves. Even though he seems to hold 
that intention is the key to morality, yet he inculcated a 
strict morality, and vexed his soul concerning the low 
standards which so widely prevailed. True, he makes you 
love Sir John Falstaff in spite of the knight's blustering, 
drinking, and lax conduct. He loved him himself, and he 
is not the only one who has seen in men such as his stalwart 
warrior some qualities of good outrivalling the qualities of 
evil. But you do not love Iago; or the ungrateful daughters 
of King Lear ; or Lady Macbeth, ice-cold and cruel. Shakes- 
peare believed in retribution; and with unwavering skill he 
traces the development of thought, emotion, and habit 
which leads to it. 

Thus, notwithstanding his power of self-forgetfulness, I 
feel that his delight was in things which are pure and true, 
divine and noble; in other words, in that which is distinct- 
ively moral and spiritual. His reverence for the deep 
mysteries of religion can scarcely be mistaken. He speaks 
of crusaders 

"in those holy fields 
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet 
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd 
For our advantage on the bitter cross." 

9 



And a brave warrior, — who had fought, he says, 

" For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, 
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross, " — 
he describes as dying in Italy, on his way back from the 
Holy Land, destined not to see again the land he loved so 
well : 

"and there at Venice gave 
His body to that pleasant country's earth, 
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, 
Under whose colours he had fought so long." 
It would be easy to gather line upon line from his plays 
bright with the lustre of respect for holy things— let me say, 
of faith and hope in holy things. I dare not stay to quote, 
nor is it needful that I should quote, Portia's eulogy of 
mercy, or Lorenzo's pleasing imagery of the star-strewn 
sky; much less may I stop to bring together the allusions to 
events narrated in Sacred Scripture. Nor may I do more 
here than direct attention again to the problems suggested, 
not only by the scepticism or doubt of Hamlet, but even 
more forcefully in the Tempest. There the critics have 
pointed out that Ariel appears to indicate the capabilities 
of the human intellect when detached from physical attri- 
butes; and Caliban seems to typify human nature before 
the evolution of moral sentiment. Significant, too, are 
Prospero's words, as the vision which he had conjured up 
for Ferdinand vanished away: 

"You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort, 

As if you were dismay : be cheerful, sir. 

Our revels now are en'ded. These our actors, 

As I foretold you, were all spirits and 

Are melted into air, into thin air. 

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 

10 



Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

So impressed am I with the genius and work of Shakes- 
peare, that I confess had I aught to do with the education 
of the clergy I should prescribe a thorough study of his 
plays and poems, and not of his only, but also of the great 
dramatists of Greece and of the Elizabethan age; and also 
of the chief works of Edmund Spenser and Francis Bacon. 
The reading of Francis Bacon, for instance, undoubtedly 
would expand their knowledge, and protect them from one 
of the most curious delusions known in the literary world. 
I believe that an acquaintance with human nature, and of 
the powers of the English tongue, as depicted by William 
Shakespeare, and, let us say, Christopher Marlowe and 
Beaumont and Fletcher, would be an invaluable part of a 
clergyman's education. 

As all men know, William Shakespeare was baptized in 
the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon, on April 26, 1564. 
It is taken for granted that he was born only three or four 
days earlier. In Henley Street are two adjoining houses 
forming a detached building; and in one of these visitors 
are shown a room which for more than a hundred and fifty 
years has been claimed to have been the poet's birthplace. 
It is doubtful, however, if this part of the building was then 
owned or occupied by the Shakespeares; and all that re- 
mains of the building as it was at the time Shakespeare was 
born is the cellar under the so-called birthplace. The ad- 
joining house, however, was bought by his father in 1556; 
and the family appear to have lived in it for many years. 

11 



But beyond a few exceptions, I must not take up your 
time with particulars of the poet's life which are familiar to 
all. Of the many critics and guides who have dealt with 
that life, none is surer than Sir Sidney Lee. For many of 
the details I advance, I depend on him. 

Of William Shakespeare's parents let this suffice. His 
father, John Shakespeare, of yeoman origin, went to Strat- 
ford from a neighbouring village about 1551, and set up in 
Henley Street as a trader in farm produce, dealing in corn, 
wool, malt, meat, skins, leather, and gloves. In 1552 he 
appears in the borough records as paying a fine of twelve- 
pence for having allowed a dung heap and pile of dirt to 
accumulate in the street in front of his house. This is 
John Shakespeare's introduction to English history. A keen 
man of affairs, he prospered both in business and in the 
esteem of his fellow townsmen. In turn he held several of 
the borough offices, and in 1561 became one of the two 
chamberlains. Later he reached the dignity of an alder- 
man, and from 1567 was known by the honourable appella- 
tion of Mr. John Shakespeare. From being the bailiff of 
Stratford he passed on, in 1571, to the dignity of chief 
alderman. His best good fortune, however, was his wife, 
Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, at Wilm- 
cote, near Stratford, whom he married in 1557. She in- 
herited both money and land; and seems to have been of 
gentle ancestry. Neither she nor her husband appears to 
have been able to write; but in those days people much 
higher in social position than they made their mark instead 
of signing their names. Some years after the wedding, the 
tide of prosperity turned. In the financial difficulties 
which overtook her husband, she freely sacrificed of her 
means. This did not save John Shakespeare from anxiety 
and distress. When William his son had reached his thir- 
teenth year, he took him from school and put him to work, 

12 



tradition says in his butcher's shop. Of this stress of cir- 
cumstances the detractors of the poet have made much. 
It has not the slightest bearing upon the genius. In the 
bestowal of gifts, Providence is no respecter of persons. 
But as with Thomas a Becket and Cardinal Wolsey, so some 
have endeavoured to belittle Shakespeare's parentage and 
early life. His father and mother were not among the 
world's great folk, but apart from their own acquirements, 
they had influential relatives and friends, and among their 
kinsfolk was Edward Arden, the trusted attendant of 
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. 

There were chances, therefore, whereby William Shakes- 
peare could get into touch with people of rank and influence, 
and obtain glimpses of a brilliancy and dignity of life un- 
known in Henley Street. And if an attempt be thought 
necessary to account for William Shakespeare's inclination 
to the stage, it may be said, that possibly, through this 
Edward Arden, he had an opportunity of witnessing some 
of the entertainments at Kenilworth, fifteen or twenty miles 
from Stratford, which the Earl of Leicester gave in honour 
of Queen Elizabeth. The Queen visited Kenilworth, then 
at its very best, in the July of 1575, and the series of festivals 
held during her stay there was unequalled for ingenuity 
and splendour, even in that age of extravagance. Shakes- 
peare was then eleven years old, and were he there the 
masques and pageants could not have failed to have had 
an influence on him. 

But not only at Kenilworth had Shakespeare oppor- 
tunities of seeing much of that life to which some day he 
should add the vitality and grace of his genius. Warwick 
and Coventry were replete with historical memories; and 
the latter city had regularly constituted guilds of players. 
Even to Stratford, though a town small, out-of-the-way, 
and insanitary, in the year when Shakespeare's father was 

13 



high bailiff, came a troupe of players, to be welcomed by 
Mr. John Shakespeare; and within the next eighteen years 
came there no less than twenty- three other strolling troupes. 
It is not unreasonable to suppose that a youth such as we 
may conjecture William Shakespeare to have been should 
have taken count of these players, and with fancy excited 
by their performances have developed a love for history 
and romance, and later, in his days of wandering, have 
turned to the theatre. 

More than this. Since childhood's surroundings have 
so much to do with the development of the man, let me say, 
that not only is that Warwickshire one of the most romantic 
regions in England, rich in traditions, folklore, and historical 
associations, but nowhere has Nature been more bountiful 
in many of her most charming graces. Villages and towns, 
manor-houses and churches, are there in almost every 
direction, set in landscapes that rival the most daring con- 
ceptions of artists and poets. In those far-away days and 
in quiet and winning silence lay hillside and valley, unsullied 
by smoke but beautified by mist, tender and purple, here 
covered with dark forest, here broken by park or field, and 
anon enlivened with the gleaming of running water. In the 
brooks the angler found abundant sport; the woodlands 
furnished prey for the hunter; and on the moors the fal- 
coner loosed his hawk. A wondrous country that, where 
numberless attractions twine themselves around the heart 
and quicken the imagination; where the daisies sleep while 
nightingales sing, and mill-wheels turn as the trout springs 
beneath the willows to the fly; and where Shakespeare had 
his first insight into the mystery of Nature! In that fair 
land, he watched the sun " gliding pale streams with heaven- 
ly alchemy ;' ' he knew "the uncertain glory of an April day ; " 
he heard the lark at .heaven's gate sing; he indeed found 

14 



" tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything. " 

I know well that delectable country. Allow me to 
become personal. I was born, and in my early youth 
brought up, within a few miles of Stratford-on-Avon. 
Clearly do I remember one summer afternoon, soon after 
my thirteenth birthday, when I spent three or four hours 
in that town, for the first time by myself. Before this, I 
had been taken to Henley Street, to New Place, to the 
Church, and to the Grammar School; and often had I 
crossed the bridge built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign 
of Henry the Seventh. Once I had seen Charlecote on my 
way to Warwick, and had been told the tradition of Sir 
Thomas Lucy. I also knew the story of the beautiful and 
unfortunate Charlotte Clopton. But I had not read a 
line of Shakespeare, unless possibly as a quotation. This 
afternoon, however, I went by myself the usual route the 
tourists take, especially to the old church, where in the 
chancel I looked again on the monument of the great poet. 
Then I went out and listened to the rooks, and sat on the 
wall under the trees by the river. That scene Shakespeare 
saw full many a time: green fields beyond, cattle under the 
wide- spreading oaks, the stream lightly moving the sedges 
and lilies near the shore, butterflies and bees among the 
flowers on the bank, birds flitting from bush to bush, the 
sunshine falling through the boughs and brightening all 
with exquisite and tender glory — a warm July afternoon, 
when drowsiness and fancy went together hand in hand, 
and one knew not whether what one saw or thought was 
dream or verity. To me it seemed all Shakespeare. And 
yet, only for his name, Shakespeare to me was nothing. 

I bought an unbound copy of the Plays, "a poor thing, 
but mine own," the smell of the printer's ink lingering still 
about it; and in due time I went home. That night, hid 



15 



away in my room and supposed to be asleep, my candle 
screened so that no one passing by should see it, unconscious 
of time, indeed, to quote a winsome line, utterly forgetful 
that "the iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve," I 
read Romeo and Juliet. I did not know or even care for 
the passion, but the plot was mine. I could appreciate the 
characters and scenes. And much besides. I had felt the 
charm of romance and the fascination of Italy. I had met 
brave sirs and noble dames. The genius of Shakespeare 
had touched my soul. Humour had come to enrich fancy. 
Mab, queen of fairies, sported freely in the midst of dreams, 
and I laughed at her tricks — 

"And sometimes comes she with a tithe pig's tail, 
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep ; 
Then dreams he of another benefice. " 
Knew I not, even in those early years, what tithes and 
benefices meant, the one to the farmer and the other to the 
priest? Nor did the charm of the lovers' contention miss 
me. 
Juliet, 

"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: 
It was the nightingale, and not the lark, 
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear; 
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree : 
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. 
Romeo. 

" It was the lark, the herald of the morn, 
No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks 
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: 
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 
Perhaps this reminiscence will bring back to some of 
you the delight with which you first, in the dawn of youth, 

16 



read Shakespeare. Life has another joy, in some respects 
another meaning, after you have entered that realm of 
endless wonders. 



No one claims that Shakespeare was an accomplished 
or an exact scholar. I shall bring this up again a little 
later. He attended the free Grammar School at Stratford, 
where the Latin language and literature were the chief 
subjects of study; and though he left school early in his 
boyhood, yet, during the five or six }^ears we may assume 
he remained there, he probably acquired a working familiar- 
ity with authors such as Seneca, Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. 
In after life he used Ovid in the original, though he seems 
to have preferred other Latin writers in translations, of 
which there were many. We do not know his character- 
istics as a boy. He may have been, as we would fain be- 
lieve, diligent and industrious; but he may have pictured 
himself in 

"the whining schoolboy with his satchel, 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school." 
With an alert and retentive mind such as his, those days 
at school gave him the means of access to any ancient 
author needed for his purpose. Perhaps I may add, that 
the little schooling he had was also enough to save him from 
spoiling himself with academic habits and in pedantic lore. 

For, after all, Shakespeare's real school, both as boy 
and man, was not Oxford or Cambridge or their like, but 
the world itself. He possessed the faculty of reading and 
understanding human nature, as well as a marvellous keen- 
ness of observation, and his gifts received their development 
largely from contact with all sorts and conditions of men. 
Whatever defects there were in his education were met by 



17 



an intuition, a fineness of thought, and a spirit of confidence, 
probably to some extent inherited from his mother, but for 
the most part indigenous to himself. As Professor Walter 
Raleigh says: "Shakespeare was 'to the manner born/ 
From the very first he has an unerringly sure touch with the 
character of his high-born ladies; he knows all that can 
neither be learned by method nor taught in words, — the un- 
written code of delicate honour, the rapidity and confidence 
of decision, the quickness of sympathy, the absolute trust 
in instinct, and the unhesitating freedom of speech." 

I have made these references to the poet's early life for 
obvious reasons. Of his career in London, either as play- 
wright or actor, I shall say no more than may be needed 
by way of illustration. Before those days of weary toil 
and noble triumph, however, it will be remembered that, 
while in his nineteenth year, he had married Anne Hatha- 
way, the daughter of a substantial yeoman at Shottery, 
near Stratford, and eight years his senior. First, was born 
a daughter, Susanna, baptized at Stratford, May 26, 1583; 
and then came twins, Hammet and Judith, both baptized 
in the same church, February 2, 1585. This early marriage 
and growing family added much to his father's perplexity, 
and, as he himself had no adequate means of livelihood, 
resulted in his own distress and impatience. It may have 
been for these domestic reasons, as much as from his prone- 
ness to trespass on Sir Thomas Lucy's preserves, that led 
him late in 1585 to try his chances in London. Thither he 
trudged on foot; nor did he return to Stratford for nearly 
eleven years, the year in which his son Hammet died. 

In those eleven years Mr. John Shakespeare became 
poorer and poorer, and William Shakespeare's wife seems 
to have fared badly. But with the poet's return, in 1596, 
the affairs of the family speedily improved; and though 
William continued to reside in London, he visited Stratford 

18 



once a year, till his final retirement, in 1611, and then he 
made his home there for the rest of his days. With pros- 
perity came comfort and honour. His father was awarded 
a coat of arms. Shakespeare himself purchased the largest 
house in town, known as New Place, and planted an orchard 
there. His reputation for wealth and influence increased. 
His income as a dramatist and actor grew, and in 1599 he 
obtained a share in the profits of the Globe Theatre. A 
shrewd and businesslike management of his interests added 
still more to his acquirements. He bought properties in 
London as well as at Stratford. His generosity was not 
less marked than his success. His native town appreciated 
his efforts to restore to his family that repute which was 
well nigh lost by his father's misfortunes. A rising phy- 
sician at Stratford, John Hall, in 1607, married his elder 
daughter, Susanna, long remembered as " witty above her 
sex," a woman of singular piety and of never-failing tender- 
ness and service for others; and the following year was born 
the poet's only grandchild, Elizabeth Hall. His younger 
daughter, Judith, was married in 1616 to Thomas Quiney. 
It has been suggested that we are indebted to Judith 
Shakespeare for something of the beauty and simplicity 
which appear in Miranda and Perdita. Judith survived her 
three children, and the only child of Susanna, Elizabeth 
Hall, though twice married, died without offspring in 1670. 
By the purchase in 1605 of the lease of a moiety of the 
tithes of Stratford, Shakespeare became one of the lay 
rectors of the parish, and thereby secured the right of burial 
in the chancel of the Church of the Holy Trinity for himself 
and his family. His son, his father and mother, and his 
only brother-in-law, William Hart, were buried in the 
churchyard; but he himself was interred before the altar, 
April 25, 1616, two days after his death, in a grave seven- 
teen feet deep. Soon after his death, the question was 

19 



raised among men of letters if his remains had received ap- 
propriate sepulture. Some of his admirers thought that he 
should have been buried in Westminster Abbey, beside the 
remains of Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont. One of the 
most enthusiastic of these admirers, William Basse, three or 
four years after the poet's burial in Stratford Church, 
penned the following lines: — 

"Renowned Spenser lie a thought more nigh 
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie 
A little nearer Spenser, to make room 
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. 
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift 
Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fifth 
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain, 
For whom your curtains may be drawn again. 
If your precedency in death doth bar 
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, 
Under this carved marble of thine own, 
Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone; 
Tlry unmolested peace, unshared cave, 
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave, 
That unto us and others it may be 
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee." 
Ben Jonson, in his eulogy to the dramatist, prefixed 
to the folio of 1623, evidently with this elegy in mind, says : — 
"My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further to make thee a room. 
Thou art a monument without a tomb, 
And art alive still, while thy book doth live 
And we have wits to read and praise to give." 
Within five or six years of his funeral, the monument was 
erected which is still on the chancel wall over his grave, with 
an effigy of the poet, probably designed by Nicholas Stone, 

20 



the famous English sculptor of the day, and executed by his 
coadjutor, either Bernard or Nicholas Johnson; and with an 
epitaph, most likely written by a London friend, which, 
whatever its defects of style, maintains Shakespeare to have 
been the greatest man of letters of his times. Especially 
worthy of notice is the expression that with Shakespeare 
"quick nature died." The English part of the epitaph, 
which, as Sir Sidney Lee observes, embodies a conceit touch- 
ing art's supremacy over nature, characteristic of the spirit 
of the Renaissance, reads thus: — 

"Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? 
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome 
Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
Far more then cost; sith all yt he hath writt 
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt." 
Monuments to the memory of Shakespeare have been 
erected in many cities. Among the finest of them is the 
bronze statue in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Pardon another 
digression. This statue was provided for by a bequest of 
$10,000 made by Mr. Samuel Johnston, a member and 
benefactor of this parish, who at the time of his death, 
October 5, 1886, was living at 99 Pine Street, now 669 
Lincoln Parkway, well within the sound of the bells of 
St. James's Church. He desired to give to Chicago some 
lasting expression of his affection for the great poet, and 
to carry out this purpose he appointed in his will Mr. 
John de Koven and Mr. Ezra B. McCagg, parishioners of 
this Church, and Mr. William Elliot Furness, an associate 
of his at Harvard. The work was done by William Ordway 
Partridge, and its dignity, grace, and poetry give it a place 
among the masterpieces of art. It was unveiled April 23, 
1894, in the presence of a large and distinguished con- 
course of people. The newspapers speak of the enthusiasm 

21 



and applause. In his address, among other things, Mr. 
Partridge said: "My model was conceived in Milton, Mas- 
sachusetts, and executed in Boston. The large statue I 
worked out in Paris. I visited England: Stratford and 
London. I talked with Seymour, Lucas, and Henry Irving. 
I hunted down the types. I left no stone unturned. I 
walked with the poet, and dined in the old garden. In 
fact, I did my best to get at the spirit of the man; and 
yet, after all, how little we can put of this man's person- 
ality in bronze! Whatever criticisms may be made upon 
the work, believe me, I have done for you my level best. 
I have put my faith in only three of the one hundred and 
thirty-seven portraits which confronted me w T hen I went to 
England : the effigy at Stratford, the death mask, and the 
Droeshout which appears in the Folio Edition." 

It may be of interest to add, that "in loving memory 
of Samuel Johnston," his nephew, Mr. E. S. Fabian, gave 
to St. James's Church the cover to the font, the tiling on 
which the font stands, the brass railing in front of the 
font, and the prayer-desk and candelabrum used at bap- 
tisms. On the standard are inscribed the words, "Walk 
as Children of Light." Thus in this Church we have a 
perpetual memorial of the man who gave to Lincoln Park 
its statue of William Shakespeare. 

Need I say that every year, on April 23, this statue is 
covered with an abundance of flowers? But they who 
would see the statue at the best time, and think the thoughts 
inspired as it were by the kingly figure sitting there in his 
chair of state, should choose an early morning or a late 
afternoon in May, when the trees are thickening with foli- 
age, and the lawns are deepening in verdure, and the old- 
fashioned garden, which runs north and south on either 
side, is hour by hour growing richer and sweeter in colour 
and suggestion. Then the light streams from east or west, 

22 



as though it would give the glory of heaven to the man 
who, in the outcome of his mind, revealed attributes almost 
superhuman, if not divine. And you stand silently and 
reverently, as in the presence of genius, with heart sub- 
dued and memory alert, till imagination brings the fairies 
carrying the bloom of the bushes, and pictures pure and 
radiant spirits, such as an Imogen or a Perdita, passing 
from beside the poet into the shadows beyond. 

But I must return to the burying place in old Stratford 
Church. 

It may be well to observe, even though it would be 
naturally taken for granted, that there is no break in 
identity between the boy who was born in Henley Street 
and the man who was here buried. His contemporary 
townsfolk knew him to be the same: that he had gone to 
London, obtained fame and wealth there, and had spent 
his last years mostly in his native place. His London friends 
had no doubt that the man they had known on the stage 
and as a writer of dramas lay in his grave in Stratford 
Church. His widow knew that the man entombed in the 
chancel of Holy Trinity was the man she had married. 
Possibly her life with him had not been happy. Possibly 
he intended to slight her in his will; though quite as possibly 
he had made ample provision for her. But she taught her 
daughters to respect his memory; tradition says that she 
desired to be buried with him; and in 1623 she was laid 
beside him. Even her son-in-law, John Hall, puritan as he 
was, and it may have been not infrequently subject to his 
father-in-law's quips and jests,— for Shakespeare disliked 
puritans most heartily, — does not seem to have refused 
recognition to the poet's position as a playwright. 

These particulars should not be forgotten. They bear 
upon the singular hallucination which has sprung up, one 



23 



scarcely knows why or how, in regard to the claims of 
Shakespeare as an author. 

You are well aware, and you expect me to keep in mind, 
that the opinion has been entertained, and with no in- 
considerable energy advanced, that Shakespeare did not 
write the plays or poems which bear his name, but that 
they were, at least in all probability, the creation of Francis 
Bacon. The first approaches to this opinion were made 
nearly seventy years since, and the opinion rests principally 
on the supposition that, among the men of his day, Francis 
Bacon alone possessed the almost inexhaustible knowledge 
and marvellous literary skill manifested in these plays and 
poems. If there were other men approaching Francis 
Bacon, William Shakespeare, to judge from his bringing up, 
could not have been one of them. 

It may be said, indeed, that it matters little who wrote 
the poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare so long as 
we have them. And yet personality does add to the 
interest. To know the author is something towards under- 
standing the work. In this case the design is to set aside 
a tradition unquestioned for more than two hundred years, 
and to substitute one man for another. 

The controversy is familiar. We may dismiss from our 
consideration arguments drawn from ciphers and crypto- 
grams. Arbitrary and elusive, fantastic and ludicrous, 
they can be invented at will, and used to prove anything. 
Nor need we examine the parallelisms between passages in 
Shakespeare's works and passages in Bacon's works; or the 
enigmatic allusions in Bacon's correspondence to his secret 
recreations. The substance of the doubts brought against 
Shakespeare really lies in the hypothesis that he did not, 
and could not, have produced the literature which has been 
attributed to him. 

24 



To vindicate Shakespeare there is no necessity, even 
were it possible, to depreciate Bacon; though it should be 
observed that the opinion against Shakespearian author- 
ship depends upon the depreciation of Shakespeare and the 
exaltation of Bacon. Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and 
Viscount St. Albans, well deserves to be called the British 
Socrates. Perhaps in the realm of thought he comes 
nearest to the Greek Seeker after Truth. Great as a 
statesman, a lawyer, and a philosopher, he combined the 
qualities and excellencies which go to the making up of 
those vocations in rarest symmetry and transcendent vigour. 
He possessed a wide range of thought, experience, and pow^ 
er of observation. Bacon, says Lord Macaulay, " moved the 
intellects that moved the world/ ' His language both 
marvellous and expressive; his clearness and majesty of 
diction; his grandeur and solemnity of tone, as his biogra- 
phers maintain, have the true ring of genius. All men know 
the stimulating power of his Essays and of his New Atlantis; 
and they who have read his philosophical and professional 
works realize that they have passed under the spell of a 
master. For his honour and fame, Francis Bacon requires 
not even the plays and poems of Shakespeare. 

No one need wonder that Shakespeare having been de- 
throned, the purple should have been given to Bacon. 

But even Bacon had his limitations. Genius cannot 
reach perfection in all things : certainly not in things literary . 
I cannot imagine the grave and judicious Richard Hooker, 
a master of eloquence and thought hardly less in rank than 
Bacon, writing the Hesperides of Robert Herrick; nor for a 
moment should I suppose that Thomas Huxley or John 
Tyndall, mighty scientists though they were, could have 
discovered a David Copperfield or a Henry Esmond. But 
were I to think such things possible, it would be no more 
absurd than to fancy that Francis Bacon could have written 

25 



Hamlet or a Midsummer Night's Dream. His literary 
style, his genius, and the bent of his mind as he reveals it 
in his books, preclude the possibility of a foundation for 
such a fancy. You might as reasonably expect men such 
as Sir William Blacks tone, formerly famous for his Com- 
mentaries, or the Reverend James Hervey, once popular for 
his Meditations among the Tombs, to produce the Elegy or 
the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Whatever else Francis 
Bacon could have done, his writings and his contemporary 
reputation show that he could not have created, say, a 
Miranda, a Juliet, or a Rosalind, a King Lear, a Shylock, 
or even a Sir John Falstaff . 

Moreover, Francis Bacon was not neglectful of his own 
interests. His genius indeed outstripped any vanity he may 
be supposed to have possessed; but he was ambitious and 
desirous of standing well in the world and with his sovereign. 
He would have found no surer way to the lasting affection 
of either Queen Elizabeth or King James than for him, 
their lord keeper and trusted counsellor, to manifest a 
genius such as that which Shakespeare displayed. It was ' 
no disgrace for a man high in rank and office to write plays or 
poems. The age was singularly rich in men of position who 
tried their hand at poetry. Versatility was held in honour, 
and there would have been no lowering of dignity in a man 
being both lawyer and dramatist. And though the voice 
of the Puritan was heard in the land, it was as yet feeble 
so far as the theatre was concerned, and little heeded by 
sovereign or court, or by the vast majority of the people. 
Nor, when the plays became popular and Shakespeare well 
known, could Francis Bacon have forgone the fame and 
credit of having written them, had he done so. No man is 
likely to allow his work to be appropriated by another, and 
the praise due to him for such to be given to another. 



26 



Francis Bacon must have known that immortality lay in 
those creations. 

It should be remembered also, that both Bacon and 
Shakespeare were well known men in their day and genera- 
tion. Queen Elizabeth and King James were in turn pat- 
rons of the dramatist. It is not to be supposed that they 
thought of him and of his plays to the same degree or at the 
same time that they thought of Francis Bacon; but they 
knew both men, and they were competent judges of men 
and of literature and art. Many of the plays ascribed to 
Shakespeare were presented before the court, and at the 
time were spoken of as his work. Queen Elizabeth was so 
pleased with the character of Falstaff in Henry the Fourth 
that she commanded Shakespeare to exhibit the valiant 
knight in another role, as a victim to the power of love. 
Hence the Merry Wives of Windsor. Among his other 
productions, Twelfth Night, which is still deservedly re- 
garded to be the perfection of English comedy and the most 
fascinating drama in the language, at the time was looked 
upon as Shakespeare 's most popular creation. Hamlet was 
performed before the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 
and speedily attained a position in literature which it has 
never lost. Shakespeare's praises were sung by many voices. 
The eyes of city and country were on him. At the gather- 
ings of wits in the Mermaid Tavern, he was a welcome 
guest. His friends speak of him as ingenious, mellifluous, 
silver tongued; his industry was described as happy and 
copious; and he is declared to have been honest and of an 
open and free nature. He is always "the gentle Shakes- 
peare," his amiability, courtesy, and kindly consideration 
for others winning the affection of those who came into 
contact with him. Among the courtiers with whom he was 
intimate, and who in turn inspired him with warm personal 



21 



regard, was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. To 
that nobleman he dedicated his Venus and Adonis. 

Had Shakespeare not been thought capable of writing 
these plays, had his conversation, habits, and appearance 
not corresponded with the genius manifested, he would have 
been quickly found out and mercilessly exposed. He had 
rivals, but he overcame their jealousy and secured their 
homage. There was everything about him to justify his 
claims, had he seen fit to vindicate that of which no man 
had doubt. There was nothing about Francis Bacon, 
admirable as were his excellencies, to suspect that he had 
any love for the theatre or any leaning to dramatic art. 
Had he possessed a faculty for poetry, it would unfailingly 
have cropped out. Of all the gifts that God may give, the 
imagination and impulse of the poet can be least concealed. 
There is not a fragment of play or poem attributed to Bacon 
by the people who knew him: unless we are daring enough 
to consider as poetry his "Translation of certain Psalms 
into English Verse, " which he made while sick in the year 
1624, and dedicated to his friend George Herbert. On the 
other hand, there is not the slightest intimation or suspicion 
that the people of those days discovered or imagined in- 
congruity between Shakespeare and the plays to which he 
set his name. 

On the contrary. Envy was shortsighted enough to 
testify to his reputation. Shakespeare's first play, Love's 
Labour's Lost, at least in its earliest form, appeared in 1591. 
Other plays followed fast, and it would seem that the third 
part of Henry the Sixth was acted in the March of the 
following year. About the end of August, in 1592, Robert 
Greene, a writer and playmaker of some repute, then on his 
deathbed, wrote an essay styled the " Groatsworth of Wit," 
in which he bitterly assailed Shakespeare as an "upstart 
crow," and denounced him as being "in his own conceit 

28 



the only Shake-scene in a country." He travestied and 
ridiculed the Duke of York's exclamation concerning Queen 
Margaret, and which evidently had caught the public's 
ear: "O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!" To 
Greene, Shakespeare's chief offence, beyond his success, 
was his adaptation and revision of other men's work: "beau- 
tified with our feathers;" but he did not question that the 
" antics garnished in our colours" were done by Shakes- 
peare. This savage attack on Shakespeare was resented, 
though not by the poet. In the December of the same 
year, 1592, three months after Greene's death, Henry 
Chettle, Greene's publisher, printed an apology for the 
abuse of the young actor. He regretted that when he put 
out the Groatsworth of Wit he had not spared Shakespeare. 
"I am as sorry," he wrote, " as if the original fault had been 
my fault, because myself have seen his demeanour no less 
civil, than he [is] excellent in the quality he professes; — 
besides, divers of worship (i. e. men of respectability) have 
reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his 
honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves 
his art." 

Allow me to quote another contemporary. Francis 
Meres, a clergyman of scholarly attainments, writing, in 
the year 1598, a review of English literature from Chaucer's 
times to his own, enumerates several of Shakespeare's plays 
and mentions some of his poems. "As Plautus and Seneca," 
he says, "are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy 
among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the 
most excellent in both kinds for the stage." He names him 
among those who have mightily enriched the English 
tongue, and gorgeously invested it in rare ornament and 
resplendent habiliments. "As Epius Stolo said that the 
Muses would speak with Plautus's tongue, if they would 
speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with 

29 



Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English." 
Elsewhere he writes: "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought 
to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives 
in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare," 

The contemporary recognition of Shakespeare's work 
may not be lightly overlooked. Grandiloquence may be 
out of fashion, but it does not detract from truth. Two 
other encomiums lie before me: one published by Richard 
Barnwell the same year as Meres's book. 

"And Shakespeare thou, whose honey-flowing vein, 
Pleasing the world, thy praises doth obtain; 
Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste, 
Thy name in Fame's immortal book have plac't, — 
Live ever you, at least in fame live ever; 
Well may the body die, but fame dies never." 
The other was printed by William Barkstead in 1607, and 
comparing his own muse with that of the great poet, he 
says : 

"His song was worthy merit, Shakespeare he 
Sung the faire blossom, thou the withered tree." 
When Meres wrote his treatise on English literature, 
Shakespeare had not done his greatest work. Thirteen 
years of literary life at least remained. Beginning with 
Love's Labour's Lost in 1591, and ending probably with 
the Tempest in 1611, twenty years covered his dramatic 
activity. His poems and some sixteen of his plays were in 
print before he died; and seven years after his death, in 
1623, a nearly complete collection of his plays was published 
in folio size. This folio edition is prefaced by commendatory 
verses by several poets, including Ben Jonson, and by an 
assurance from two of Shakespeare's friends and fellow- 
actors, Heming and Condell, that they were moved to assist 
in this enterprise, not by ambition either of self profit or 



30 



fame, but by the desire to "keep the memory of so worthy 
a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare." 

In their preface, the compilers of this edition speak of 
Shakespeare as a happy imitator of nature, and a most 
gentle expresser of it. "His mind and hand went together: 
and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we 
have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it 
is not our province, who only gather his works, and give 
them you, to praise him. It is yours that read him. And 
there, we hope, to your diverse capacities, you will find 
enough, both to draw, and hold you : for his wit can no more 
lie hid, than it could be lost." Among the verses appears a 
poem by Leonard Digges, an eminent Oxonian, a good 
classical scholar, and a poet and translator of no little merit. 
He speaks of Shakespeare's works as living when time has 
dissolved the Stratford monument; thereby showing that in 
1623 the monument in the church was already erected, and 
that no one doubted that the man buried there wrote the 
poems: 

"Be sure our Shakespeare, thou canst never die, 
But crown'd with laurel, live eternally." 
These particulars do not so nearly interest us, as does 
the friendship of Ben Jonson for Shakespeare. It was not 
a friendship as intimate as that which Jonson had with 
Francis Bacon, whom he looked upon as the culminating 
glory of his generation in letters, but it was close enough 
for him to understand and to appreciate the man whose 
genius went beyond his own. His admiration for him was 
outspoken. "I loved the man," he said, "and do honour 
to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." 
He noted adversely the absence in Shakespeare of qualities 
on which he himself set high value. Among other things 
he censured his frequent extravagance of language and wit. 
He did not think him faultless, but he declared that "he 

31 



redeemed his vices with his virtues;" and he added, "there 
was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." 
At times in his conversation he exposed himself to ridicule; 
and yet, says Jonson, "he was, indeed, honest, and of an 
open and free nature; had an excellent fancy; brave notions, 
and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, 
that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped." 

Jonson himself differed from Shakespeare widely in 
acquirements and achievements. His scholarship was un- 
questioned. Professor Her ford says : " He had constructive 
imagination in an extraordinary degree, a force of intellect 
and memory which supplied it at every point with profuse 
material, and a personality which stamped with distinction 
every line he wrote." He was a dramatist of recognized 
ability. More than this, he knew the world, had pro- 
fessional jealousy sufficient to defend his own interests, and 
was courageous enough to speak his own mind. It would 
have been impossible for Shakespeare to have palmed off 
on Ben Jonson work which was not in every sense his own. 
It would have been no less impossible for Ben Jonson to 
have imagined that Francis Bacon possessed any of the 
gifts of a dramatist. 

Indeed, Jonson does not seem to have questioned Shakes- 
peare's right to popular esteem. He knew that in the 
judgment of both actors and spectators Shakespeare out- 
stripped all competitors. In a dialogue written about 
1602, William Kempe, the chief comedian of the day, re- 
ferring to the faults of University players as he had seen 
them at Cambridge, says, "Why, here's our fellow Shakes- 
peare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too." 
This did not hinder Ben Jonson from writing the stately 
and glowing eulogy which appears in the First Folio Edition 
of Shakespeare's works, "'to the Memory of my Beloved 
Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us." 

32 



In this eulogy, he calls the " Sweet Swan of Avon" by such 
epithets as " the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage; " 
he declares that neither Man nor Muse can praise too 
much his writings; and he closes his hymn of praise with the 
lines: 

"But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere 
Advanced, and made a constellation there! 
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage, 
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage, 
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like 

night, 
And despairs day but for thy volume's light." 
What more than has been said is needed to prove the 
authorship of the plays? Against this evidence and every 
canon of criticism, can we dispute Shakespeare's right, or 
believe that one of the most unlikely men in the world 
could have been the originator of dramas and verses acknowl- 
edged at the time and for more than two centuries immedi- 
ately after the time to have been written by the Man of 
Stratford? Faith must have some fact or reason to rest 
upon; but when we examine the pretensions of the advocates 
of Bacon we find neither. 

Notwithstanding the abundance and force of this con- 
temporary evidence, and the allowances which may be 
reasonably made for Shakespeare's extraordinary power of 
absorption and assimilation of books and of conversation, 
to say nothing of his genius,— " he was," says Thomas 
Fuller, "an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, one 
is not made but born a poet,"— it is still reiterated that the 
works ascribed to Shakespeare could not have been written 
by a man so poor and uneducated, brought up in the com- 
parative seclusion and barbaric conditions of a remote 
part of the country. Even though it be admitted that he 
attained excellence as an actor, how came a poverty stricken, 

33 



peasant bred, and outlandish stranger to know the courts 
and customs of kings, the glamour of battlefields, the 
delicacy of poetry, or the richness of a humour the superior 
of which has never been found? To put the question is 
supposed to answer it. The assumption is as desperate as 
it is brave. And it may be remembered that of One im- 
measurably greater than Shakespeare it was asked, " Whence 
hath this man this wisdom? " Nor may we forget the lowly 
origin and mean advantages of Robert Burns, of the youth 
Chatterton, and of Abraham Lincoln. Plautus himself, 
the most celebrated comic poet of Rome, had no education, 
and worked as a menial for the actors on the stage. 

Let it be admitted, once and for all, that Shakespeare 
had his limitations. These limitations appear clearly and 
palpably in his plays; and, by the way, they are not limita- 
tions like unto any to be found in anything that Bacon ever 
wrote. Ben Jonson declared that Shakespeare had small 
Latin and less Greek. "I remember," he says, "the 
players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, 
that, in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted 
out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a 
thousand!" His works do not display the learning of the 
Schools. He made the refinements of logic and rhetoric 
ridiculous. He laughed at schoolmasters. Unlike Bacon, 
who had travelled and lived abroad, Shakespeare does not 
appear to have crossed the borders of his own country. He 
picked up his information anywhere, and used it simply 
to suit his purpose. He represents one of his characters as 
travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, and another as 
embarking in a ship at the gates of Milan. He speaks of 
Delphos as an island, and makes one of his personages say, 
"our ship hath touch'd upon the deserts of Bohemia." 
Many of his characters and plots he took from Greek and 
Latin, or French and Italian tales, and these he knew mostly, 

34 



if not entirely, through translations. By the time he had 
his will with them, their original makers would not have 
recognized them. He gave clocks to the Romans of Julius 
Caesar's time; he allowed England to have papermills in 
the days of Henry the Sixth. He used Holinshed for his 
English history, and never troubled himself when he sub- 
stituted legend for fact. The critics have had their fling 
at him: one says that in tragedy he is outdone by Otway; 
and another tells us that his King Lear is not to be com- 
pared with the old Greek OEdipus. Thus errors and faults 
have been pointed out, which, granting that they exist, 
and many more, is only as much as to say, that the sun 
has spots. 

Why blame an almost faultless scholar for slips of this 
kind? Bacon would no more have blundered in this guise, 
than, with his scrupulous care in correcting proof-sheets, 
he would have allowed the First Folio Edition of the Plays 
to have gone out with its thousands of typographical 
mistakes. 

This discussion has entangled and delayed us unneces- 
sarily. Why should we have to prove that which is as 
evident as anything can be in human life and history? 

We do not question that other poets and dramatists have 
had some qualities in kind and measure scarcely inferior to 
the like which Shakespeare possessed. And yet I question 
if his powers of observation and expression have ever been 
excelled, and in union I doubt if they have ever been equalled. 
He sees and remembers things apparently without effort, 
and he writes with entrancing ease and charm. Into his 
work he brings an inexhaustible knowledge of country life, 
of birds, flowers and trees, of horses and dogs, of hawking, 
hunting, coursing and angling, which he undoubtedly 
acquired in his youth. No one better than he could depict 

35 



village constables, country justices, tavern keepers, rustic 
housewives, and shepherds and clowns; indeed, all the 
varied characters of rural life, and not less exactly those 
belonging to the city. The same sureness and fulness of 
delineation mark his dealings with kings and princes, with 
barons, bishops, ladies of high degree, and men of distant 
lands and ages. He presents with equal fidelity characters 
as diverse as Imogen, Anne Page, and Mistress Quickly; 
Malvolio and Touchstone; Henry the Fifth, the melancholy 
Jaques, Abraham Slender, and Master Robert Shallow; to 
say nothing of scores of other creations, distinct as they, 
which spring to the mind unbidden and yet welcome. 
There have been characters drawn by other men as clear 
as these; scenes depicted no less interestingly; allusions 
made with equal aptness : but the student will search in vain 
for any one author who has touched and revealed life, and 
the springs and motives of action, so abundantly, so uni- 
. versally, so completely, as Shakespeare has done. Every 
phase of life has been dealt with by some writer; Shakes- 
peare only has brought all phases within the scope of his 
genius. 

No illustration is required: but as an instance of sug- 
gestive description none better need be searched for than 
that of the night before the Battle of Agincourt. 
"Now entertain conjecture of a time 
When creeping murmur and the poring dark 
Fills the wide vessel of the universe. 
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, 
The hum of either army stilly sounds, 
That the fix'd sentinels almost receive 
The secret whispers of each other's watch: 
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames 
Each battle sees the other's umber 'd face: 
Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs 

36 



Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents 

The armourers, accomplishing the knights, 

With busy hammers closing rivets up, 

Give dreadful note of preparation. 

The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, 

And the third hour of drowsy morning name." 

Sir Sidney Lee reminds us that no one has better de- 
scribed Shakespeare's faculty in portraying character than 
Margaret Cavendish, the learned and celebrated Duchess 
of Newcastle. Writing about the year 1664, she declares 
that Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been 
" transformed into every one of those persons he hath de- 
scribed," and had experienced all their emotions. To her 
his tragedies became real. They were no mere represent ar 
tion of acts that had been performed, but were the acts 
themselves. "Indeed," she concludes, "Shakespeare had a 
clear judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep 
apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution." 

The powers of the dramatist have been abundantly ex- 
emplified by a succession of men and women who have been 
the pride of the British and American stage. They have 
interpreted his characters according to their several talents 
and capacities, each with the purpose of bringing out, if it 
were possible, some trait or meaning undiscovered by others, 
hidden away in the dramatist's conception. England's 
great Roscius, as he has been called, Richard Burbage, a 
companion of Shakespeare, took for the first time the char- 
acters of Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello. His Richard 
the Third was very popular. In the reign of Charles the 
Second, Thomas Betterton, called in his day the greatest 
actor in the world, presented a Hamlet that Samuel Pepys 
declared to be "beyond imagination," and a Henry the 
Fifth that was "incomparable." Elizabeth Barry's Lady 

37 



Macbeth, Barton Booth's Othello and Henry the Eighth, 
and Colley Cibber's Cardinal Wolsey, delighted the folk of 
the early eighteenth century. Then came the noblest Roman 
of them all, David Garrick, eclipsing his contemporary, James 
Quinn, an eminent depicter of Shakespearian characters, 
and rivalling Charles Macklin, whose Shylock has rarely 
been equalled, and John Henderson, whose Falstaff won 
him widespread celebrity. Garrick secured fame as Richard 
the Third, to say nothing of his Macbeth, Henry the Fourth, 
and Iago. Greater on the stage than all other women, be- 
fore or since,— and that is saying much when one remembers 
the brilliant women who have followed her,— was Mrs. Sarah 
Siddons. She reigned in her day, and is now remembered, 
as a very queen of tragedy. Tate Wilkinson said, "If you 
ask me 'What is a queen?' I should say Mrs. Siddons." Lord 
Byron thought her worth Cooke, Kemble, and Kean all put 
together. She was praised for her physical perfections, her 
cadences and intonations, and the harmony of her periods 
and pronunciations. Enough could not be said of her 
Isabella, in Measure for Measure, her Queen Katherine, or 
her Cordelia. W T ith Ophelia she is said to have failed seri- 
ously, and indeed no one has ever come near Susanna Maria 
Cibber in that character. But her Lady Macbeth remains 
magnificently unique. It is said that in the sleep-walking 
scene she missed the horror in the sigh, the sleepiness in the 
tone, and the articulation in the voice, which had made 
Mrs. Pritchard's presentation so impressive ; but the world 
soon forgot Mrs. Pritchard in Mrs. Siddons, even though 
Mrs. Siddons would not carry the candle, and imagined the 
heroine to be a delicate blonde. 

But these last hundred years have not been less pro- 
ductive of thoroughly proficient Shakespearian imperson- 
ators. If I refer to some of them, it is to bring out more 
clearly the impression they have made on us; and also to 

38 



evince how great a man he was who could engage and hold 
fast the life-strength of such people to represent his creations 
and express his thoughts. The men and women were 
mighty, but they had material such as only he could provide. 
Of them all, has any one ever equalled Edmund Kean in 
characters such as Richard the Third, Shylock, and Hamlet? 
Kemble when asked, if he had seen Kean as Othello, replied, 
"I did not see Mr. Kean, but Othello;" and Coleridge said, 
"To see Kean act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of 
lightning." His mantle fell on Junius Brutus Booth, who, 
like the splendid Tommaso Salvini, a much finer and more 
finished actor, had a remarkable intensity, which on some 
memorable occasion is said to have awed a crowded and 
tumultuous house into instant silence. Even actresses tak- 
ing part with him were frightened at his sudden and nervous 
expression of concentrated passion. Of his sons, Edwin 
Thomas Booth takes precedence for a Hamlet and a Wolsey 
of striking excellence. He was an actor of rare eloquence, 
spiritual energy, graceful manners, and inexpressible charm, 
whose personality, like that of some other masters of the 
stage, seemed to lose itself absolutely in the character he 
was presenting. Lawrence Barrett took Cassius to Edwin 
Booth's Brutus. Even greater than they was Edwin For- 
rest, say, as Othello and Macbeth. In the forefront of 
scholarly, conscientious, and captivating exponents of 
Shakespeare comes William Charles Macready. Tennyson 
classed him with Garrick and Kemble; and some critics 
thought him so high as to be above criticism. And yet, in 
almost every respect, he was excelled by Sir Henry Irving- 
one of the truest and most masterful of Shakespearian 
scholars and interpreters, whose scrupulous attention to de- 
tail, shown in his stage settings and his well selected com- 
panies, was as gratifying as his own exact and magnificent 
impersonations. Irving was supported by Ellen Terry, whose 

39 



rank among the queenliest of tragediennes is well assured. 
Near her stands the pride of the American stage, Charlotte 
Saunders Cushman, whose Lady Macbeth was second to 
none, and whose Shakespearian readings never failed of 
large and enthusiastic audiences. She played Romeo, with 
her sister Susan as Juliet. Mary Anderson, most charm- 
ing of Juliets, Ada Rehan, and Irene Vanbrugh shine in 
the same brilliant constellation; nor will Helen Faucit, one 
of the most delightful of Rosalinds, be forgotten as the 
Beatrice at the opening, in 1879, of the Memorial Theatre 
at Stratford-on-Avon. I have not overlooked Modjeska and 
her marvellous Cleopatra, Ophelia, and Viola. Nor shall I 
fail to mention Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, first of living 
Shakespearian actors, whose Macbeth, for instance, is deserv- 
ing of much praise. And no one who saw Richard Mansfield 
will fail to recall his Richard the Third, and the way in 
which he made the exclamation which has been the joy of all 
actors and the delight of all audiences ever since the words 
were written: 

"A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse !" 
Undoubtedly our appreciation of Shakespeare has been 
influenced by actors such as these, as well as by the multi- 
tude of scholars who have sought to elucidate his works. 
A strong, living tradition has made itself felt. We have 
probably come to read into Shakespeare more than Shakes- 
peare meant, and have ascribed to him a faultlessness of art, 
as well as of genius, at which he did not always aim, and 
indeed sometimes came short of. On the other hand, it is 
quite as likely that we have read out of Shakespeare much 
that is in Shakespeare, and have imagined defects that do 
not really exist. Of one thing we may be sure, that we shall 
never know the processes by which he did his work. Thus 
equally destitute of authority are they who say that he 
wrote without thought or design, in what might be called 

40 * 



the haphazard or confidence of genius, and they who suppose 
that he laboured and amended, in what might be called the 
timidity of talent and the anxiety of taste or purpose. 

I have said nothing of the poems: the Sonnets, the Venus 
and Adonis, or the Rape of Lucrece. These are read later 
and less frequently than the Plays, and with some reason. 
To the general reader, as Brandes admits, the Sonnets, for 
instance, are the most inaccessible of Shakespeare's works. 
Though in beauty, strength, and art, and sometimes in 
evasive ingenuity, they were the wonder and despair of 
other Elizabethan poets, yet they range in quality from 
sublimity to inanity. For the most part, they seem to 
have been written in the apprentice days, long before 
Shakespeare had acquired the skill of a master. And even 
at their best, they do not escape the artificiality common to 
sonnets of those times. To use Sir Philip Sidney's expres- 
sion, — himself struggling against the fault he censured, but 
could not escape, — they are void of the "inward touch.' ' 
Writing in 1593, Dr. Giles Fletcher, author of a collection 
of sonnets, in which he held up to ridicule this tendency, 
says, "Now that I have written love sonnets, if any man 
measure my affection by my style, let him say that I am in 
love;" and he adds, "A man may write of love and not be 
in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or 
of witches and be none, or of holiness and be profane." 
In these days we should not call Shakespeare's Sonnets in- 
sincere, but rather abstract; and though they may have in 
them allusions to personal experiences, yet they are not to be 
regarded as autobiographical. Undoubtedly I shall be 
charged with a want of insight, but I have not been able to 
convince myself that Shakespeare intended in these Sonnets 
to tell any part of the story of his life. I am not sure of 
Wordsworth's opinion, that "with this key Shakespeare 

41 



unlocked his heart." Indeed, I should be sorry to think 
that Shakespeare was a man such as these Sonnets are 
claimed to reveal. I believe that he is as impersonal in 
them as he is in his Plays. The age indulged in this form 
of literary expression to a surprising extent, and he followed 
the fashion. It is not his fault if in these days the fashion 
is not attractive. Even he himself makes his characters 
laugh at such work. In Henry the Fifth, the Dauphin, 
speaking of his horse, says, "I once writ a sonnet in his 
praise and began thus: Wonder of nature!' " Benedick, in 
Much Ado about Nothing, being urged by a waiting- 
woman to write a sonnet in praise of her beauty, promises 
one "in so high a style that no man living shall come over 
it;" and a little later, some friends discover a paper written 
in his hand, "a halting sonnet of his own pure brain, fash- 
ion'd to Beatrice. " 

But lest it should be supposed that I am belittling the 
Sonnets, let me say that some critics, both wise and compe- 
tent, think that it is in the Sonnets rather than in the 
Plays we may easier discover Shakespeare's genius. I do 
not agree with them; and yet as an illustration of the beauty 
and perfection of Shakespeare's work as a sonneteer, I 
quote the Seventy-third Sonnet, sad, to be sure, as the best 
of them all are; and with confidence, if it has not already 
done so, I leave it to make its own way into your good 
graces: 

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold— - 
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day 
As after Sunset fadeth in the West, 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 

42 



In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire 

That on the ashes of his youth doth He, 

As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. 

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long." 

But neither this nor aught that I have said sets forth 
the genius. We may affirm things about that genius, but 
only a master near unto Shakespeare himself can fully 
make it known. Why should the effort be made? In his 
comedies and tragedies we are brought into the thraldom 
and fascination of a mind that to most minds seems as 
mountains to hillocks or oceans to valley ponds. Explana- 
tion baffles and escapes. I can no more reach the heights 
and depths and breadths of his genius than I can define the 
charm of a Haydn or the ecstacy of a Handel. Hamlet 
becomes stupendous as St. Paul's. If I wonder at the one, 
I am overawed at the other. I cannot grasp the mystery 
of either. I only know that I am in a realm of thought 
and behold a magnificence of art; and with profoundest 
reverence I read the legend, which applies alike to archi- 
tect and poet, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." 

But I have kept you long, and I come quickly to my 
last words. 

There have been many princes in the realms of poetry, 
but there have been only three kings: Homer, Dante and 
Shakespeare; and he would be a venturesome man, perhaps 
a foolish man, who would decide which of the three is the 
greatest. They reign in a glory all their own. Outside the 
writers of Sacred Scriptures, they have done more than any 
other poets or writers to influence the progress and develop- 
ment of human thought. But in that Shakespeare speaks 
your own tongue, you come nearest to him and understand 

43 



him best. You can enter unreservedly into his treasure- 
land, and according to your industry and capacity appro- 
priate therefrom the wealth that shall make your life the 
brighter, your mind the broader, and your heart the happier. 
He will unfold to your wondering eyes visions that do not 
fade away and that tell you of things which can never be 
forgotten. With him you may possess a world which gold 
could not buy or the strength of kings conquer— a world 
that has in it more than suggestions of inexpressible felicity 
and of unceasing refreshment. 

That region of living, splendid imagination is within the 
reach of all who speak the English tongue; and no one ever 
yet wandered therein, and missed the grapes of Eshcol. 

For all these memories, we thank God; we praise Him 
that He gave such surpassing genius to one of our own race 
and blood; we pray that in the sons and daughters of earth 
we may see, as Shakespeare saw, the dignity of sorrow or 
the charm of lightheadedness; and in the day, when our 
kinsfolk the world round would do honour to the Man of 
Avon, we bring as our tribute, not only rosemary and 
laurel, but also the golden wreath which tells of immortality 
and love. 



44 




This plate of the Statue of William Shakespeare, in Lincoln Park, Chicago, 
was made from a photograph taken on May 12, 1916. 



GUILIELMUS REX. 

The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day 
And saw that gentle figure pass 
By London Bridge, his frequent way— 
They little knew what man he was. 

The pointed beard, the courteous mien, 
The equal port to high and low, 
All this they saw or might have seen — 
But not the light behind the brow! 

The doublet's modest gray or brown, 
The slender sword-hilt's plain device, 
What sign had these for prince or clown? 
Few turned, or none, to scan him twice. 

Yet 't was the king of England's kings ! 
The rest with all their pomps and trains 
Are mouldered, half-remembered things— 
'T is he alone that lives and reigns! 

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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014 106 430 7 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 106 430 7 # 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



